PSALMS OF HEALING [Su, 9-12-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

One of Craig Stewart’s assignments, as he worked to become a UMC Certified Lay Speaker, was to develop a year-long plan to use the Psalms in worship. It reminded me of something I had not thought about for almost 25 years. 

The granddaughter of a woman in the church I pastored back in the 1990s--about seven or eight years old, if I remember correctly--was badly hurt in a car accident. Head trauma. Coma. In a hospital in St. Louis.

Vic Stenger, A man in our congregation said, “Let’s do a Psalms vigil for her recovery.” I had been a part of prayer vigils, but not for healing. Plus, Vic had a well-earned reputation for being a little off-center. Also, a lot of the psalms are not about healing but destruction, some quite vicious in their desire to obliterate enemies and the like.

Over several years, though, I had come to appreciate Vic. His differentness often allowed him to think in ways the rest of us couldn’t. Sometimes that gave us significant new opportunities. And, after all, at the very least, getting together to share scripture is a good thing. So, we decided to do it.

We started right after Sunday morning worship, with anyone in the congregation who was willing taking a shift reading Psalms, and almost everyone was willing. 15 minutes at a time. As others read, people came and went to listen. Just someone standing at the lectern and reading from the big Bible there. Psalm 1 thru Psalm 150.

Vic started and ended the vigil, and just as he finished Psalm 150, the phone in the church office rang. “She just sat up,” her mother said. “She’s fine. She’s smiling and laughing. She says that she felt something going on, and she wanted to find out what it was.”

Now, medical folks sometime refer to this sort of thing as “spontaneous healing.” That’s a good designation. It avoids having to think about other possibilities.

Some others would piggy-back on “spontaneous healing” and say, “Your Psalms reading had nothing to do with her recovery. It’s just coincidence that she got okay right then.” That’s a perfectly reasonable response. I won’t argue with it.

Of course, it raises the whole question of intercessory prayer. Does God do something good for me because “he” forgot about me and your prayer reminded “him” that I need some help? Do you have the power, in prayer, to change the mind of God about me? If God is so loving, why doesn’t “she” just go ahead and help; why is prayer necessary?

I have no answers for any of those questions. But I have had personal experiences when I knew that God was present and at work in my own life, or someone else’s life.

When I hear people talk about those sorts of experiences, they often describe it in terms of “feeling,” as the little girl did in feeling that something was going on as we read Psalms. With me, those experiences were more a “knowing” rather than a “feeling.” I didn’t feel any different from usual in those moments, but I knew there was something going on that I couldn’t understand, but was real, nonetheless.

I don’t think it makes any difference whether you “feel” or “know.” But it is an experience that we should not dismiss because we can’t understand it. It has helped me to understand that God relates to us primarily through presence with us, not activity for us.

As Sister Julienne said recently in an episode of Call the Midwife, “ God is not present in the actions but in the results.” I’m not sure I understand that exactly, but it resonates with my soul.

I retired shortly after our Psalms vigil. My friend, Vic, is dead. I don’t know anything about the little girl. But I think that this pandemic time—pandemic not just of virus, but of racism and greed and violence-- might be a good time for a Psalms vigil. For the healing of the world.

John Robert McFarland